Alternative Currencies: An Archive and a Manifesto (2013 - Ongoing), an archive of over 50 alternative currencies from around the world. Includes, publications, architectural installations, sculpture, prints, texts, and posters.
Alternative Currencies: An Archive And A Manifesto, originally conceived as part of the multimedia installation History Zero, is an ongoing research based project, concerning currency and exchange, and brought together to disrupt our everyday assumptions about money. It explores the many objects that have been used as money, the exchange systems that exist without the use of money, the ways that communities have purposefully created their own currencies independent of state or crown, and the manners in which we ourselves invest money, exchanges, and markets with our own meanings and purposes. Although the archive barely scratches the surface of the many stories of alternative currencies and exchanges that exist both today and throughout history, it brings these few tales together to inspire a sense of possibility and creativity in the viewer. The stories in the archive are gathered from community organizations, ethnographic accounts, alternative financial institutions, NGOs, economic studies, and historical sources. The archive's images come from currencies donated by their users, museum collections, ethnographic and historical books, collectors, and amateur and professional photographers worldwide. The quotes in the archive find their source in scholars and activists who wish to offer a critique of the inequalities that our contemporary financial systems create through their structures, and who follow up on that critique with a vision of more ethical, sustainable, just, and socially-embedded exchanges that can provide us with new ways to relate to each other and to the world around us.